Browsing: Submarines

When Cmdr. Roger Meyer led the attack submarine Miami on a successful five-month deployment in 2010, he couldn’t have known he’d be the last commanding officer to take the boat on patrol. But a May 2012 fire set by a worker at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, effectively ended the Miami’s service life. Despite a 10-hour effort to battle the blaze, led by Meyer, it would’ve cost $450 million to repair the sub — an expenditure that the Navy decided in August wasn’t worth it. Instead of 10 more years of service, five more deployments and a handful more…

Just because a few nuclear missiles get launched doesn’t mean everybody’s paying attention. The ABC-TV submarine-based drama “Last Resort” premiered Thursday to “OK” or “soft” ratings, depending on which Hollywood-industry website you’re reading, drawing a 2.2 rating and a 7 share in the coveted 18-49 demographic. That put the premiere third in its time slot, below CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” and FOX talent show “The X Factor,” according to final ratings released Friday. Finishing below a top-rated sitcom and a Simon Cowell-judged karaoke contest may not sound all that bad, but the “Last Resort” numbers are just slightly…

Frank Munger’s Atomic City Underground, a blog by our sister paper the Knoxville News Sentinel, uncovered some previously undiscovered photos of then-Capt. Hyman Rickover, before he became father of the nuclear Navy. The paper obtained the photo at left, likely taken in fall of 1946, from Tim Gawne, who found it in the archives of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Munger writes that most surviving photos of Rickover were taken after the launching of the first nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus in 1954. This rare photo, which escaped being destroyed with a batch of others, was taken while Rickover was the senior officer stationed…

The government is getting rid of the Navy’s experimental Sea Shadow stealth boat. And if you got the goods, this sweet ride could be yours. But there’s a catch: you have to scrap the boat. The 164-foot-long craft is up for auction by the General Services Administration and has a $10,000 minimum bid, that, as of noon Monday, had not been met. Act fast, the auction ends May 4 at 5 p.m. CST. But wait, there’s more. If you’re the winning bidder, you’ll also receive the Hughes Mining Barge, which has the Sea Shadow inside, like the world’s most awesome…